


love carved into our skin

by contumacious (bfc)



Category: Amar a Muerte (TV)
Genre: BECAUSE THEY ARE, F/F, Happy Ending, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-03
Updated: 2019-02-03
Packaged: 2019-10-21 07:21:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17638316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bfc/pseuds/contumacious
Summary: in which, Juliana and Valentina have very different expectations to what a soulmate means or what they'll end up being likespoiler alert: they're both going to end up pleasantly surprised





	love carved into our skin

Juliana doesn’t drink and yet, she has carried a mezcal bottle around for as long as she can remember. 

It rests on her left side, the dull grey outline covering her skin and it is a constant reminder of the future she doesn’t get to choose. She avoids looking at it if she can, simply because it helps her pretend it doesn’t exist.

See, it’s something she has in common with her mother, an alcohol bottle on their skin to celebrate the defining qualities in the men they are supposed to be with. She’s seen the broken bottle on her mother’s arm, and she’s heard the story of how the generic grey bottle cracked and became the dark, contrasting bottle of beer her father always drank. 

Always being the keyword as she cannot really think of a time when her father was home with them and was not holding one in his hands.

Lupita looks at her arm and sees love and proof that her and Chino are meant to be. She thinks of the time when she was younger, without a home or any stability and the hardships she had back then and then of the relief she felt when she met her now husband. They had issues, sure, but he gave her a home, he gave her a daughter she loves so much and even though he had his problems, the life they had together was theirs and better than she had hoped for. 

Her mark, while still just in black and white after all these years, fuels her and gives her hope. It makes her want to get on a bus to a different country just for a chance to find her love - the man who ran from them and by doing so left both her and their daughter behind.

When Juliana sees the mark, however, she sees a bottle flying in a far too small room. She sees glass exploding and hears her parents yelling at each other and sometimes her father yelling just at her. She sees her mother’s face as she asks her to go outside or hide when his father ended up just a little too drunk. She sees a man, flushed and angry, grabbing her mother and shoving her back, accusing her of things she had never done and then, always, her mother defending him afterwards when things had cooled down. 

She thinks they would be better off without him.

Her mother disagrees. 

So when Lupita first tells Juliana of her plans to leave for Mexico, they argue. 

Her father is a murderer who was electrocuted in front of them for his crimes. Because of his involvement with the cartel, men with guns have been to their house. She and her mother have been threatened and shot at and in order to survive they recently ran through the most dangerous storm seen in a long while where her mother could have actually died. 

And then her father – who somehow survived the electrocution and then did nothing to clear his debt with the cartel – just ran off by himself, leaving them in a motel and in the mess he had created. 

They argue and it still ends with her on a bus to Mexico. 

They have no money, no destination, no plans to track her father down, but they do it anyways, because despite Juliana seeing the broken bottle as a symbol for the violent man who never seemed to care for them that’s not what her mother sees. 

They are on the bus when her mother tells her something she has heard countless of times before.

“Trust me, you will understand once you meet the one.”

She sinks back into the uncomfortable bus seat, presses down on her side and as so many times before, wishes that she never does.

\---------

Valentina’s mark has always been a little different. 

As a child, she was always so curious about them. She liked the camera on his dad’s chest with its case covered in intricate swirls of bright red and blue and the red and blue symbols running down her mother’s ribcage. She adored all the stories her mom told them about how the universe found your second half in the whole world and made sure you would find them, the stories with twists and turns that always ended happily and with the person finding true love, a partner that would be there for them no matter what.

She went around asking people about their marks back then, carefully inspecting the small colourful garden on Silvina’s forearm and bothering Tiberio until the poor man tugged his pantleg up to show her a very unexpected fried egg on a beautiful patterned plate.

As a child, Valentina honestly thought that the mark was her key to her own personal fairy tale, where she’d be whisked away by a prince to live a happily ever after, a story much like the one she had heard so many times from her parents. 

“What if he doesn’t have any hair?” she asked her mom once while she was brushing her hair. “Will I still love him?” 

Her mother laughed, the brush in her hair stilling.

“Yes, I am sure he’ll still steal your heart.”

There was a pause then as Valentina had pondered this scenario of falling in love with a boy with no hair and then she’d realized –

“Mom!” 

Her mother laughed and so did she, then believing that yes, whatever it would be like would most definitely be fine because that’s how these stories went.

Her mother died a few days later and she realized that even with the universe helping them there were still many stories that did not end with a happily ever after. 

And so, as she grew older her expectations matured and as years passed, she grew less and less idealistic. The thoughts of finding the perfect person were replaced by ones with someone to just… be there. No longer did she imagine someone with a chiselled jawline and dark hair blowing back in the wind approaching her in slow motion but rather someone who’d just hold her close and make her feel whole again. 

She dated.

Not a lot, but she had had a boyfriend while in Canada (nothing really came of it) and then she started dating a boy she met in the university after she returned.

She didn’t know anyone then and he seemed to know everyone. He was cute with a carefree attitude who really tried his best to make her smile and for her that was enough back then. 

She’s not sure if she ever expected him to actually be her soulmate, maybe she did, right at the start, but now she doesn’t really think so anymore. 

The star on his calf has remained as grey as it was when they met and despite his attempts over the years – he did once even dress up in order to surprise her, but was stopped by Silvina and the guards before he reached her – her mark has not changed either.

It’s not unexpected, considering that they’re a year in and she still doesn’t feel like they’re in love, but the people around her keep telling her that it’s not rare for it to take time.

Her father fell in love with someone new and it took her a while to wrap her head around it. His skin still bore the mark of her mother, a little faded now, but he went and found someone else. Lucia, his father’s company slogan dark on her neck, never tried to replace their mom per se, but they all struggled still.

She saw he was happy and so she supported him, because if anything, their dad deserved to be happy.

Eva, with the crimson scorpion on her shoulder that matches both her husband’s star sign and allegedly his nickname back in college (allegedly, because honestly, Valentina cannot imagine anyone calling a young Mateo ‘the Scorpion’ with a straight face), wasn’t quite as convinced. She claimed that the fact it was still black showed that it wasn’t yet real, she argued against his plans to marry her and took offence when Lucia started to join them for breakfast.

Once, after Lucia had somehow found out about her mark and she made a comment on how big of a crime it was, Eva had taken offence on Valentina’s behalf even, calling Lucia out on inappropriate behaviour.

Eva herself had told her countless times not to steal anything when they went out shopping together, Guille had once sent her mugshots of criminals asking if any of them looked attractive to her and her dad had insisted on checking the criminal records of any boy she met.

But no, Lucia’s joke had been too much.

Eva’s attitude took a toll on her father, Valentina knew, but there was not much they could do to change her sister’s mind. 

And even if anything changed there now it wouldn’t make her father feel better, because he, too, died.

Murdered in front of her eyes mere days ago. 

Now, she sits in her room, a bottle in her hands and her phone on silent and stares into the mirror facing her bed. 

She has not felt this alone in a while.

Almost instinctually her right hand goes to caress the area on her back, right by her shoulder. She stands then, a little hesitantly and approaches the mirror, turning so she can see her back.

The small grey robber looks back at her as it always does. Smiling sadly, she brings the bottle back to her lips and accepts that she might be alone for a while longer.

**Author's Note:**

> My love for soulmate fics accidentally met a series with souls jumping all over the place that somehow doesn’t have a common tag yet, so really, I was contractually obliged to do this 
> 
> And I know the first part came out a little short and sad, but it’ll get better, I just really needed to get this out of my system


End file.
